


The Implications of Crossroads

by kathryne



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Loneliness, Older Characters, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 13:25:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13412190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathryne/pseuds/kathryne
Summary: Frankie's going to Santa Fe.  Grace told her she should, and she is.  And now Grace must reckon with the size of the hole Frankie's absence reveals in her life.*This fic will not take s4 into account.  Rating, character tags, and warnings will be adjusted on a chapter-by-chapter basis.





	The Implications of Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> Sneaking in just under the wire to get this started before s4! 
> 
> Thanks to ellydash for betaing.

_1._  
_Who can say what the world is? The world_  
_is in flux, therefore_  
_unreadable, the winds shifting,_  
_the great plates invisibly shifting and changing–_  
– from 'Prism,' by Louise Glück

*

It's hot in Santa Fe.

That's not the first thing Grace notices, not the most important, but it's the one she keeps coming back to, as if the weather can explain all the discomfort she's feeling. It's hot, and dry, and the sun beats down on her as she walks along the middle of the marketplace aisle. Sweat beads at the base of her spine and between her breasts. She fights the urge to dab at her hairline and concentrates instead on keeping her back straight despite the seeming weight of the sun. It's not humid, though, not like the oppressive summers of her childhood barely remembered. It shouldn't feel like she needs to move slowly, like the air is pushing back, jealous of every inch of space her body takes up. Regardless, she's struggling.

Maybe the heat is getting to her, or maybe it's just that the farmer's market is so overwhelming. It's a collision of clashing colours wherever she looks, with sellers hawking everything from organic produce to goats-milk soaps to hand-knit Tibetan prayer flags. One booth is selling compost, and Grace wrinkles her nose as she passes, the smell adding yet another layer to the immensity of the experience. The noise is astonishing as people bargain and shout and laugh; the cloth sides of the vendors' tents flap in the warm breeze and wind chimes of all sizes jangle and clash. Grace thinks she sees heat lines rising from the baked dirt, wavy like the set of a bad perm, but it might just be the entire surreal atmosphere. There's a metallic taste in her dry mouth, as though the silver jewellery she sees everywhere around her is pervading the very air, and suddenly all she can think of is getting back. To Frankie.

She left Frankie at the booth, saying she was going for a quick look around. She needed the time to catch her breath and try to get herself at least somewhat under control. It hasn't helped; now she just feels more unsteady, even as she turns to retrace her steps. She seems to see Frankie everywhere: waving a tie-dye tank top in the air, dashing behind a tent in the next aisle, gazing at a mobile made from tiny knitted cow skulls. Did Frankie come after her? Did Grace say something so absurd, so revealing, that Frankie chased her down to demand an explanation? Grace looks from side to side, frantic, moving so fast her neck twinges. She almost wants to find someplace to hide, a dark corner out of the sun where she can curl up alone.

One of the Frankies turns around, and Grace loses her breath in relief. It's not her. None of them are her. It's not that Frankie's followed her. It's that everyone here looks like Frankie. 

All the women are wearing clothes that could've come from Frankie's inexhaustible closet of hippie horrors; they're covered with pseudo-Native embroidery or entwined in rope after rope of hemp necklaces and bracelets. Even many of the men sport vests or trousers that would be more at home on Frankie than on, say, Sol. In San Diego, Frankie is unmistakable. Here, she blends perfectly. She gets lost.

Grace picks up her pace despite the heat, desperate to see the real Frankie – her Frankie – again.

She hears Frankie first. Her laugh echoes out over several aisles. Grace watches as other vendors turn, orienting themselves to the magnetic north of Frankie Bergstein's delight. At last, she rounds the corner; at last, Frankie is there.

Frankie's booth stands out from all the others. Oh, sure, it's a hodgepodge of fabrics, just like those around it: none of it matching, all of it threadbare. The rugs on the floor are covered with ground-in dirt and dust until the patterns are barely visible. But Grace feels sure she could pick it out from any distance, even in the dark, even without her glasses. Frankie's paintings call to her, no matter how far away she is.

But as she gets closer, some differences become apparent, too. She didn't look very hard at the displays earlier, too eager to get away from Frankie and Jacob and get a grip on herself. Now she looks, and she sees how Frankie's work has changed in even the short time she's been in Santa Fe. 

Instead of the strong, vibrant colours that used to characterise her backgrounds, her newer paintings are more muted. The desert landscape dominates, but without any of the rich red hills or startling green shrubs Grace saw from the airplane window as they circled. Instead, Frankie's focussed on pale sand, bleached rock, and crumbling adobe ruins. The tapestry of flowers and vines that used to twine through her work is less present, too, giving way to the smoother brushstrokes of Georgia O'Keeffe-like hills and clouds. There are still some living things present, stylised bugs and snakes that have Grace twitching away and glancing at the dirt, but mostly there are cacti and bones and branches. Frankie's still painting from life, but Grace thinks the life has gone out of her work.

Of course, the last time Grace was surrounded by Frankie's paintings like this, it was at her art show, in the echoing marble gallery so recently filled with their friends and loved ones, with her arm through Frankie's and Frankie warm against her side. Now she's on the outside of the booth, looking in, and all the space beside Frankie is taken up by Jacob, who looks as though he belongs here just as much as Frankie does.

"Did you have a nice walk, Grace?" Jacob asks, and Grace jerks her gaze from the nearest painting. 

Usually small talk springs to her tongue effortlessly, social platitudes at home in her mouth like nothing else save perhaps a martini. But with Jacob, Grace finds it all too easy to remember the other thoughtless things he's heard her say. She tries to measure her words, to balance them against the twin weights of humiliation and jealousy that make her stutter. "There's... certainly a lot to see," she says, and steels herself against the recognition of her own inadequacy. 

Thankfully, Frankie steps in before Grace is forced to come up with further inanities. But "Isn't it wonderful, Grace," she says, and then Grace curses herself for expecting anything better. "It's such a deeply spiritual city. An artists' colony. Wasn't it made for me?" The tiny bells sewn into Frankie's beading jingle. The larger silver necklace around her neck clangs. She beams at Grace, radiant as always.

Santa Fe has changed Frankie, too, not just her paintings. Everything Frankie has always been is magnified here, or perhaps allowed to reach its full expression. When Grace left for her wander around the marketplace, Frankie was already dripping in silver and turquoise, her caftan flowing, strands of her hair held back from her face by intricate wrappings. Although Grace was gone for hardly more than ten minutes, when she looks at Frankie now it's as though her ornamentation has doubled or even tripled. Beaded cuffs encircle her wrists, encrusted with crystals, and her sleeves are pushed back to make room for more bracelets. She's wearing so much jewellery that Grace thinks it must be weighing her down. 

"I just love it here, Grace," Frankie says, her hands clasped under her chin. Her bracelets rattle. "There are so many really cute art galleries. And the Georgia O'Keeffe museum. Don't you think it was made for me?"

Wait. Grace blinks. Didn't Frankie say that already?

"The hot air balloon capital of the world is only half an hour away." Frankie bounces a little in excitement. Grace catches her breath with a hiss of pain, but Frankie doesn't seem to notice. "And it's an artists' colony. It feels so deeply spiritual here. It's wonderful, Grace."

She's definitely repeating herself. Grace stretches forward, across the barrier of the booth's wide table, trying to touch her face. "Frankie, are you all right?" 

Oh, God. What if she's having another stroke? 

This is exactly what Grace was so afraid of when Frankie said she was moving: Frankie needing her, and Grace unable to help. "Frankie?" Grace demands again, but she can't quite reach her.

Behind Frankie, Jacob puts a hand on her shoulder. It sits there, heavy, holding Frankie down. Pushing her down, in fact, Grace thinks, and Jacob seems absurdly overlarge, taking up all the space in the back of the booth, all the air, until Grace feels claustrophobically choked. She looks at Frankie, but her silver jewellery is pulling her down, too, rooting her in the ground. Her anklet twines around her leg, up her calf and down into the dirt, like the snakes in her paintings. The turquoise creeps up and up, encasing her, swallowing her. Making her part of the Santa Fe landscape forever. 

"This town was just made for me," Frankie says again, still beaming as though nothing's wrong. "Made for me – made for me – made for me – " Jacob looms forward and smiles.

Grace shrieks and jerks awake.

She struggles into a sitting position, fighting the entangling sheets and duvet until she has to throw them all off just to be able to breathe. She staggers to the window and pushes it wider, taking deep gulps of the cool sea air. It doesn't help – her stomach is still somewhere down around her ankles, like the ground has fallen away from under her feet. It reminds her of the balloon ride and how terrifying the takeoff felt. At least then she had Frankie to hold on to. 

Frankie. Grace's stomach flips again. She clutches the windowsill, swallowing down nausea. It's all she can do not to run downstairs and out to the studio, bare feet and all, to make sure Frankie's still there. Intellectually, she knows it's ridiculous, but emotionally she's all too aware that Frankie just hasn't left yet.

Because she is leaving. Grace's nightmare is going to become a reality. 

At the thought, Grace's terror returns, as strong as the claustrophobia that gripped her in her dream. She stares out at the ocean and tries to focus on what's real, right now: the slight breeze, the grey blanket of the marine layer, the rhythm of the waves and the seagulls' strident yells. 

The foggy period has lingered this year, June Gloom stretching longer than Grace can recall in all the summers she's seen on this coast. Even now, into July, more days seem overcast than not. Sometimes she thinks their balloon flight was the only clear day in recent memory. And yet, for once, Grace doesn't mind. At least it's different from the dry, desiccating heat of Santa Fe. Here the clouds are protective, nurturing; the fog and occasional drizzle promise renewal. There, Grace can't help but think all the life will eventually be forced underground. Like in Frankie's paintings, where everything had the colour bleached out of it. 

That's no place for Frankie.

Frankie is – Frankie is vibrant. She's life and colour and noise, as constant and ever-changing as the ocean. She'd probably say it's the earth-mother vibes she cultivates, or something to do with crystals or ley lines. All Grace knows is that somehow, Frankie belongs here. With Grace. They fit.

The fear recedes slowly as Grace watches the water lapping at the sand. All that's left is sorrow. Even though Grace is convinced she's right, convinced with the same kind of certainty she usually reserves for sample sales and financial negotiations... it doesn't matter. She can trust her instincts all she wants – which she does; these instincts brought her two successful businesses, and she even finally understands what the muddled nothingness she so often felt about her marriage was trying to convey – but she can't stand in the way of what Frankie wants. And Frankie doesn't think she belongs here. She thinks she belongs with Jacob. 

Grace forces herself to let go of the window. She takes a step back and stands unsupported in the middle of the room. 

It took all her courage to get in that balloon with Frankie and tell her to go to Santa Fe. To put Frankie's happiness ahead of her own. And it didn't end there. Every day since she's had to hold herself in check. To smile when Frankie talks about leaving. To keep from begging Frankie to stay. 

It's worse than the divorce. At least Robert had the decency to get things over with in one short, sharp shock. This is a long, incremental abandonment, getting worse and worse by degrees. And though Frankie has made her decision, she and Jacob haven't set a date yet. Grace doesn't know how much more she has to endure. But she will be damned before she lets herself be the millstone around Frankie's neck, holding her down when she deserves to fly.

Grace plucks at the silk of her pyjama top and makes a face. She's sweaty from her nightmare, and the breeze is starting to feel unpleasantly cool. She should shower, start the day fresh. As much as she's dreading Frankie's loss, it's not fair to either of them to act as if she's already gone. Oh, she could distance herself, start pulling away now in hopes it will hurt less later. That's normally what she'd do. It's what she's been trying to do. Frankie's never left space for 'normal,' though, and Grace can't bring herself to let go any earlier than she has to. Every moment with Frankie is an adventure, and Grace needs to store them up against what's to come.

She looks at the ocean for a moment longer. Grey on grey fading into grey: usually she can see to the horizon, but the fog is a wall, solid and unyielding no matter how hard she stares. Grace wants to be wrapped up in it, cocooned and enfolded, wants to let her barriers dissolve and yet at the same time to be protected from the despair that's constantly with her. 

Her vision goes out of focus, sudden tears blurring her eyes. She blinks, forcing them back, but no clarity follows. There's nothing to see. She turns away, pulling her dignity around herself in lieu of a blanket, and straightens her shoulders, preparing for the day.


End file.
